Tings are falling apart in the last installment of The Dust Trilogy, the next of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along unfamiliar and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of corporations, the control of mobs. "An element is at work, stealthily, gradually", says merchant a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the trade routes from his place in an city cafe. "Elements we thought were firm and strong are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Exactly what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the question that animates this final volume, which picks up where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's last foray into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of His Dark Materials. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the individuals look and think and act like us, but are joined by animal souls, essences in creature form; where the heavens are filled with witches and gryphons, but below, transports are taken and beverages is sipped, and older academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first met as a 12-year-old in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the origin story with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a mature individual: still distinctly the spiky and tenacious main character of the earlier books, but more mature, melancholic, warier, more doubtful. This restraint is heightened by her split from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
His choice to leave in search of that youthful part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he represents as her "creativity"), and her quest to rejoin with him, were the incitements of the prior book, which followed the protagonist undertake a adventurous voyage across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with marvel and peril on the way. But from the beginning, profound shifts were in action, and darker forces at work. The Magisterium – the faith's controlling power, and Pullman's deliciously chilling representation of strict, procedural malice – is under new leadership, and flexing its muscles. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who carried baby Lyra to safety along a overflowing Thames as an child in the prequel, is now an university scholar with a sideline in intelligence work: he is assigned to a key location to discover more about his plans. And beneath all of this is the mystery surrounding the rare and valuable botanical extract which seems mysteriously to be the source of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from the region. The extract is seen by certain groups as a marketable good, by others as a research-based or mystical phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an affront that must be eradicated. The issue of where it comes from, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or protected is escalating in importance.
Like the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are shown to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the world
In the previous volume, these storylines ran mostly in tandem. In the conclusion, they merge. Similar to the original series, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be inextricably entwined with the future of the world. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the central conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such authorities always have, is attempting to quell freedom of thought, innovation and art: all the personal, rebellious ways in which people can be independent.
Dimensional Rifts and Ideological Conflicts
The book begins with the finding of a series of curious fissures in the makeup of the Earth's sky: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. One such window seems to be the source of the highly contested mystical extract. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, labels these portals as a problem to the church's beliefs and endeavors to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to shift from strict reason and back to intuition, yet, her certainty that these places must be protected – that what they stand for and their value is in some way crucial – grows. "The substance, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between purity and experience is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
